Keto...just do it

I often get asked, how did you start keto? I can’t really say that there was some elaborate plan, I kind of just started. I know that reading all of the information that is available on the internet can be a bit confusing and overwhelming. Keto is not a one-size fits all type of lifestyle change. How are you supposed to know, total carbs versus net carbs, how to calculate your macros, if you should do intermittent fasting or count your calories? It is intense. Having been in your shoes at one point, I know that it can be so overwhelming that it may actually change your mind about starting, but don’t let it deter you.

A ketogenic lifestyle is one of the easiest that I have ever followed. I didn’t have to buy any fancy products. I didn’t have to significantly adjust anything that I was doing on a daily basis, I just had to eat food. Now yes, the food that I was eating changed slightly, but the fact that I could eat and lose weight was the best thing that could have happened to me and I want to help simplify this for all of you as well. The keto lifestyle, when done properly, is a lifestyle that burns fat to provide you sustainable energy. Instead of loading your body up on carbohydrates and added sugars, your body will take all of the foods that you are eating and give you clean healthy energy by putting your body into a fat burning mode.

What do you eat?

For the most part, the keto lifestyle is all about eating high fat, moderate protein and low carb. I have found great success with a 75-20-5 model. My main goal is to not consume more than 20g of net carbs per day. This is where the debate comes in. You will find that some people that say that you should be counting total carbs and others will say net carbs. I am a firm believer in listening to your body and doing what works the best for your body. If you plan to count net carbs, you would look at the nutrition label, make note of the serving size and based on that, you would calculate: Carbohydrates – Dietary Fiber. This will give you the net carbs for the product.

Majority, if not all of your carbs will come from vegetables. I like to keep it simple and stick to the basics. I eat a lot of romaine lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower and zucchini. Each of these vegetables has a pretty low carb count. I allow myself to have fruit a couple of times a week or more if I really want them, but I stick to berries since they are the lowest in carbs.

I'll be doing a keto for beginners series for the month of May as I kick off my 30 days of keto program. If you want a free sample meal plan, subscribe to receive emails down at the bottom of the page. If you want to take part in the 30 days of keto with me, just follow me on Instagram.. I will post more info and a few graphics there. If you want to start keto, but don't know where to begin and would like a coach who has been where you are, fill out the information request on tube work with me page and we can get started right away! I can't wait to see your results in 30 days :-)

My weightloss before I got pregnant with my daughter. I was only doing keto during this time.

Oh you know, just having a little meltdown

Today (Sunday) was such a beautiful day in my area. A friend of mine invited me to go to the Norfolk Botanical Gardens a while back and this weekend was perfect for my first trip. With a 3-year old and a 5-month-old, each trip out of the house is a big deal, especially if you are going out for more than a few minutes. I got everyone ready and headed out of the house on time! I mean, just getting out of the house on time with everything that I needed was a huge win in my book.

This was my first time going to the botanical garden and all I knew was that I could not wait to be surrounded by beautiful flowers and trees. Who doesn’t enjoy that? As we walked through the gardens, I was in awe of how beautiful all the flowers were. There was such an amazing variety of flowers and trees. I let my three-year-old walk (mostly run) through the trails, because he had the energy to spare and I figured it would tire him out (win win for me, right?). Tariq was enjoying the freedom to run about and touch all the flowers, leaves, rocks, and whatever else he saw. Tayce was pretty much just along for the ride.

We were at the garden for about an hour and a half before Tariq decided that no amount of beauty would make him calm. We were walking through a really interesting kid zone at the garden and had been in there for about 20 minutes. We were planning to continue walking, when he decided that he didn’t want to leave. I couldn’t just leave him in the kid section. That is pretty much frowned upon by everyone. So, I picked him up to bring him back to where my friends and Tayce were waiting.

I get back to the stroller and Tariq breaks down. I am not talking a few tears, I am talking a full-blown meltdown. Mind you, this garden is a place that is very quiet and completely relaxing. Well….Tariq at that very moment felt the exact opposite of that. He wanted everything and nothing all at once. As a mom, I knew that he had just gotten sleepy and he was fighting it with everything he could, but in that moment, it took over. He screamed and screamed as we walked through groups of people, who of course were curious about the child that was screaming. I have witnessed many meltdowns and have experienced them a few times, when I need to run errands during nap time.

This particular breakdown made me realize that even in the midst of a beautiful setting, things may not always be as great as they seem. As an adult, I do not normally scream and cry, but I can relate to my son in the sense that sometimes, people see our lives as beautiful and perfect, but meanwhile, we are breaking down inside. Everything surrounding us may look to be put together perfectly, but they are not aware of what is going on inside. My son was exhausted and that was his way of letting me know. He wanted to run and be free in this beautiful place, but he was truly exhausted.

I have felt that way many times in life and I often threw a tantrum in my own way. It reminded me that although a person’s life or situation may appear beautiful to you, you don’t know their internal struggles. We all deal with our internal struggles differently, and we can’t judge the way that a person’s struggles may surface. You also can’t just assume that your view of their life is their reality. Much like my son, no matter how beautiful your surroundings seem, once you have reached a point of physical, mental, or emotional exhaustion, your internal struggles may make an appearance in a very public way. For my son, the solution was simple, he just needed to go to sleep. For others, it is not always that simple. I must remind myself that it is okay to feel however I feel in that moment despite what other people think about my life. They may see perfection, but we each have our struggles. Don’t judge someone else’s meltdown because you think that their situation is perfect. Luckily, I had two very awesome people to help me navigate dealing with my son and my daughter, all while trying to make it back to my car. In life, we need to surround ourselves with people that are willing to help you pick up the pieces after things have fallen apart. Not those people that make you feel bad about the fact that things fell apart. Trust me, there are enough onlookers that will already make you feel that way. Much like me today, you’ve just got to gather yourself up, and push through without really caring what those around you are thinking. If I can push a screaming toddler and a confused five-month-old through a very busy garden and make it out in one piece, you can too. If someone asks you what’s going on just say, “Oh you know, just having a little meltdown”, smile and walk away. I guarantee they won’t ask you again.

On a scale of 1 to 10....

Just two blog post in and this one is going to be very personal. Normally it takes much longer for me to bare it all, but this is a personal blog, right? So here we go. I know that we live in a world where people feel very comfortable telling you exactly how they feel without regard to how it will affect the person they are saying it to, but just because society makes that okay, should we all just say what we want to anyone that we meet? I was in Kroger, my favorite hangout, after a long day at work. I did not have time to change, so I had on the outfit that I wore to work and I am sure I was sporting some pretty big bags under my eyes at this point as well. My son was being surprisingly cooperative as we deviated from our normal after work routine of cooking dinner, watching Paw Patrol or Moana, completing bath time and going to bed. I was completely prepared to deal with a combative toddler, but out of sheer luck, he was tolerating being in the grocery store. We were on our way out, but I, of course, had to have an Iced coffee from Starbuck’s. I place my normal order of a Venti Iced Coffee with heavy whipping cream and sugar-free vanilla syrup. No big deal, right? As I am waiting for my drink, another lady joins me at the counter. She asks how old my son is and I tell her that he is almost 1.5 Yrs. old. She goes on to ask a few other questions, with the last being why do you order your iced coffee so particularly? I kindly reply and tell her that I have been following a ketogenic diet since March, and I limit my carb and sugar intake. Her response after this made me speechless! She proceeds to say, “well you may need to try something else. Your baby is no longer a baby, so you can’t blame your weight on him for much longer”. I was floored! All I could do was smile, tell her to have a nice evening and walk away. As I walked away I went back and forth between wanting to cry and wanting to scream at her about all the work that I have done to lose weight so far, but I am an adult right so I couldn’t throw a temper tantrum. My son was not throwing one, so neither could I. Plus, why should I get so worked up over her 2-second evaluation of my weight and life. I have dealt with my weight for my entire life and even shed more tears than I can remember as other people made comments about it when I was younger. Those comments normally came from family members, so they don't count right? I have never had to stomach a comment like this made by a stranger, so this was new territory for me. I have never fit into society's vision of “small” or “thin”, and I may never as far as the number on the scale goes, but I am working on being a healthier version of myself and that should count, right? So why did this one lady’s comment bother me so much? Had I met her in March, I probably would have cried my eyes out while eating Oreo’s. Counterproductive, I know. Instead, she made the comment to the person that I have worked hard to become. While losing weight, I have gone through a lot of personal changes. I had to gain back some self-confidence that I lost after I had my son and I had to find some that I never actually had because of the struggles of being “overweight” when I was younger. But what made this lady choose that particular moment to make that comment? On a day when life was already hard enough for me. I wanted to know what was going through her mind when she walked up to me. Then I thought does it really matter? Is her reasoning going to make me feel better? Absolutely not! In the time that it took me to walk outside, put my groceries in my car and get my son buckled in his car seat, I realized that I didn’t care about her reasoning. I didn’t care about why she felt like she should point out my weight to me. I didn’t even care that she didn’t seem to care about how her delivery made me feel. My body made an amazing human being and that took time, so weightloss is going to take time as well. I am not ashamed of this nor do I shy away from it. She did not understand that to me this weight gain meant that my body had finally gotten it right. I was told at 21 years old that I would never carry a baby to term without an immense amount of medical intervention. She didn't know that this weight gain meant I didn't lose my baby at 12 weeks when the doctor said that I had a threatened miscarriage due to bleeding. She doesn't know that I have a daily struggle inside just to get my body functioning properly and she didn't know that sometimes the struggle becomes so intense and overwhelming that I just want to give up, but this smiling little boy that changed my body makes me keep going. She did not know these things, so the motivation behind her comment did not matter and I did not care about it. I do, however, care that I have grown enough to understand that her words do not have any bearing on my life. I will probably never see this lady again, but she made a pretty big impact on my Thursday night. She reminded me that instead of just letting everything that I think flow out of my mouth, I need to think about my delivery and realize that my words will impact whoever hears them whether I am speaking directly to them or not. It is my decision whether the impact is positive or negative. I also realized that I was finally at a place where someone else’s opinion of my body did not matter to me. I have been working really hard and because of some of my medical issues, I have had times during this journey that I have had to fight against my own body to continue to lose weight. Did the lady at Kroger know that? No, she didn’t, but I do. That is why I chose to gain something from the experience rather than allow it to hurt me. From now on, I am taking these experiences and deciding on a scale of 1 to 10 how much of an impact it should have on me and what emotional, verbal or mental response it requires from me. Plus, I feel great when I look in the mirror. I know where I started and where I am now and I refuse to let one random lady at Starbuck’s derail me completely after all of my hard work. Maybe she was having a terrible day or maybe she really just thought I should work harder than I had been at losing weight. At the end of the day, her opinion is just that, her opinion. My reaction and response is the only thing that I could control in that moment and instead of getting upset and throwing a temper tantrum, I chose to walk away and smile. Why? Because she didn’t need to get the satisfaction of a negative response from me. Plus, how can you be angry in a Kroger that has a Starbuck’s? Groceries and COFFEE! In my mind, that should be one of the happiest places on Earth :-).